The Sales Experiment

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Ask Good Questions

Ask Good Questions

Become a Leader by Asking Good questions

Few tools are more effective for salespeople than a good set of questions.

In truth, everybody benefits from being inquisitive because everybody loves talking about themselves.

You ask questions and people love you.

You ask questions and you learn what problems need to be solved.

And if you learn to ask good questions, there’s no better networking tool and no better way to grab some mentoring by leaders you respect. Leaders appreciate learners.

Today I listened to Michael Hyatt’s This Is Your Life podcast, “Twenty Questions to Ask Other Leaders.”

Hyatt and his cohost Michele Cushatt talked about the importance of asking good questions, especially when you have the good fortune of being around a leader.

I used the list of 20 questions they offer in their podcast’s show notes for an interview I had with an industry leader today.

I actually think it would be a great exercise to ask yourself these 20 questions. If you’re a blogger, then it would make a great series of posts. If you’re a salesperson, it would make a great way to mine your knowledge of your target niche.

Regardless, develop a solid battery of questions for your normal business situations. How can you dig into others’ knowledge, concerns, wisdom on a regular basis? Could you imagine the potential growth in your career or effectiveness if you learn to ask questions that others aren’t asking?

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Today’s Reading and Listening

Duct Tape Selling by John Jantsch

Episode 8: Twenty Questions to Ask Other Leaders – Michael Hyatt and Michele Cushatt, This is Your Life Podcast

Episode 9: Slay Your Dragons Before Breakfast So They Don’t Eat Your Lunch – Michael Hyatt and Michele Cushatt, This is Your Life Podcast 

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This blog is a response to Dan Miller’s unintentional challenge from his podcast on August 15, 2014: If you read or listen to 30 minutes of quality content a day, you’ll double your income. 

From September 1, 2014 through March 1, 2015, I will be doing the following:

  1. Listening or reading to 30 minutes of success, growth, business, spiritual, or other mindset-shifting, skill-sharpening content.
  2. Selecting one action item from that content (with some leeway to select an action from a previous day’s content).
  3. Doing that one action.
  4. Writing about the action or some other idea from the reading and listening of the day.

 

 

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Do the Little Things

On personality tests, I’m one of those guys who likes people and ideas and stuff like that.

That means I don’t like paperwork and processes and processes that involve paperwork. We feel that “I’s” should remain undotted and the only reason to cross “T’s” is to make sure nobody mistakes them for L’s or I’s.

But alas, as a professional services provider, the details are amazingly important. Without attending to the details, the strategic broad brush strokes become irrelevant.

Lack of execution renders brilliant ideation and good relationships useless (especially when we’re talking about delivering a service).

Today, I punted ideas and spent time focused on shoring up processes – doing the little things that, over time, will help deliver important results

While I know that it’s important to spend most of my time doing the things that leverage my strengths, but the details sill must get done.

Unless you are able to set up your organization to delegate all such things, you still will have to perform process-oriented tasks (although it’s a good idea to identify the things that you’d love to offload over time and do it as soon as possible).

My suggestions to tackle those tasks in a way to get ’em done without infringing too much on the time you want to dedicate to your more effective work:

  1. Batch Your Tasks: Do a bunch of the mundane things at one time. Just clench your teeth and push straight through them.
  2. Pomodoro Technique: Set a timer a couple times a day within which you will do process type tasks – respond to emails, note whatever CRM or other system that you have to keep notes in, make phone calls, and so forth.
  3. Save It Till the End of the Day: Get your thought work done early while you’re sharp. Knock out the

How about you? How do you get done the things that you have to do but feel like the conflict with your more effective work? Leave a comment below.

Today’s Listening and Reading: 

I listened to a few episodes of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch. I especially enjoyed his podcast with David Meerman Scott talking about the ‘new rules of selling’.  The men are pioneers in the inbound marketing world.

Until tomorrow…

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This blog is a response to Dan Miller’s unintentional challenge from his podcast on August 15, 2014: If you read or listen to 30 minutes of quality content a day, you’ll double your income. 

From September 1, 2014 through March 1, 2015, I will be doing the following:

  1. Listening or reading to 30 minutes of success, growth, business, spiritual, or other mindset-shifting, skill-sharpening content.
  2. Selecting one action item from that content (with some leeway to select an action from a previous day’s content).
  3. Doing that one action.
  4. Writing about the action or some other idea from the reading and listening of the day. 

 

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Practice High Quality Mindset Action

Practice High Quality Mindset Action

Some days don’t go awesome. They aren’t child in the hospital or the bank repossessed the car bad. They’re just rock in the shoe types of days.

They are splinter that won’t come out types of days. They are dryer stopped working and forgot to renew the tag type days. They are slight reprimand by the accounting manager days.

I’m not fond of those types of days. Who is?

Having a good day is about attitude
Give me your best shot, day!

Practice Mindset. Why Not?

One way to handle those days is to bitch and moan. Complain. Eat a lot of chocolate. Play a lot of Candy Crush. Go off on Facebook (please don’t do that one).

Another way to handle those days? Practice having a high quality mindset. I loved the advice that Jordan Harbinger of The Art of Charm guy gave on pat Flynn’s podcast:

When you walk into every room, have the shoulders straight, hold the chest out as if you’re shining a light with it, and have a big fat smile on your face.

It doesn’t matter if anybody’s in the room or not. Just smile and walk in confidently. I talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Plus, I’m blessed that I might get a new reader who won’t thumb through my posts to find this gem of advice.

Our problems are first world problems, and most of them won’t right themselves via whining. Never happens.

We want sympathy and all that, but over time, the better play is to stare the situation down and give it the big finger of a more hopeful, proactive mindset.

Which brings me to strategy number two…

Notice the Thing You Fear… And Do It

Today, I listened to The Shawn Stevenson’s The Model Health Show Podcast with Pat Flynn: How To Grow Stronger From Stress, Live More Fulfilled, And Do Work That You Love.

One of my biggest takeaways was this idea that if we fear something, then that’s a clue that we probably should lean in and confront the thing. If we are nervous about making a phone call, that means there is something to be learned or gained from making the phone call. If we are scared of a project or making a presentation, we might just be in the perfect place for growth.

Often one of these scary tasks or projects accompany the crappy days I referenced above. Sometimes these tasks are the reason for the crappy days.

Most often, the scary task has nothing to do with fighting a tiger to get the last bit of meat left on the savannah. The things we normally fear simply won’t hurt us all that bad. But they will help us to grow.

Lean in to the fear and consider it an opportunity. Walk into the room with a big cheshire grin and tell the day that you are officially taking over.

Again I ask, why not?

It won’t hurt. The people around you will thank you for having a decent attitude and things just might change.

I write these things because I need to do these things much better and much more consistently.

How about you? How was your day today and what did you learn?

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Today’s Listening (in addition to the podcast mentioned above):

Why Is Profit Viewed As a Bad Thing? John Jantsch interviews Mike Michalowicz for the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast – Great business advice in this podcast about how profit seems to be the extra that happens if we can sell enough and not spend too much. Michalowicz suggests that profit should be accounted for up front so that we don’t always spend up to our gills. (He just released the book Profit First – affiliate link)

When I listened to this advice, I couldn’t help but think about other areas in life. We need to take care of ourselves first or else we ain’t no good of anybody else. We need to build in our ‘profit’ – our time to reenergize, get some exercise, hang with the kids. All that stuff gets squeezed out way, way too easily. Don’t you think?

Leave any thoughts you have on these or any other topic burning up there in that noggin of yours. Drop ’em in the comments.

Until tomorrow….

—————————————

This blog is a response to Dan Miller’s unintentional challenge from his podcast on August 15, 2014: If you read or listen to 30 minutes of quality content a day, you’ll double your income. 

From September 1, 2014 through March 1, 2015, I will be doing the following:

  1. Listening or reading to 30 minutes of success, growth, business, spiritual, or other mindset-shifting, skill-sharpening content.
  2. Selecting one action item from that content (with some leeway to select an action from a previous day’s content).
  3. Doing that one action.
  4. Writing about the action or some other idea from the reading and listening of the day. 

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